“Very good service…with a personal touch”. What you told us about IPM in our 2022 client survey

As Bill Gates once said: “We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”

We’re always looking to improve the level of service we provide to all our advisers and planners, and their clients. So, we recently sent out our 2022 client survey, asking for an honest assessment of how you rate IPM, what we do well, what we could do better, and what qualities you rate in a SIPP provider.

Many thanks to the dozens of you who took the time to respond to the survey – your feedback will help us to further enhance the service we offer.

Read on to discover some of the key headlines from our 2022 survey.

Service is absolutely critical

When it comes to selecting a SIPP provider for clients there was one overwhelmingly important factor ahead of all others: service.

Factors such as the quality of administration and quick response times were identified as “very important” by more than 9 in 10 respondents.

Your comments specifically concerning IPM’s service included:

• “Friendly service, with better expertise than most providers”
• “Service levels [are] outstanding and pretty much the core reason we use you”
• “Very good customer service and response times, also a personal touch”.

Our approach has always been to provide a high-quality personal service, where you can call the office and speak to an individual. Indeed, many of you highlighted as a benefit “the ability to pick up the phone and speak to someone rather than a call centre”.

You also acknowledged the “short lines of communication” to “good people” and that advisers/planners have “good access by phone to knowledgeable staff”.

After the quality of service, when selecting a SIPP provider, the two next most important factors were:

• Assets allowed by the SIPP provider
• Fees and charging structure.

Both these are key reasons many clients choose IPM. From our investment flexibility to our commercial property experience and fair fees, we believe we offer an excellent all-round package for clients looking for a bespoke SIPP.

You acknowledged our “consistent high-quality service coupled with a flexible product” and our “flexibility and service levels”.

Other factors such as capital adequacy and regulatory record were less important

Interestingly, our survey also revealed that issues such as capital adequacy and regulatory record were much less important a factor when choosing a SIPP provider.

Considering the spate of high-profile SIPP failures over the last few years, we were slightly surprised that some advisers considered these issues “not important”.

Indeed, the number of respondents saying these factors were important issues has actually fallen somewhat since our 2019 survey.

If this is a concern for you, these 7 questions your clients should ask a SIPP provider can help to establish whether a firm is stable.

Advisers recommending more SIPPS

While the majority of respondents are recommending the same number of bespoke SIPPs as three years ago, just over 25% of advisers/planners are actually recommending more SIPPs today.

When we asked whether there were any factors that would encourage respondents to increase the likelihood of recommending IPM to your clients, you told us:

• More than half say our Moneyfacts “five-star” rating makes it more likely they would recommend IPM – that’s an increase of more than 20% since 2019
• Around half of respondents said they would be more likely to recommend IPM if we had an AKG Financial Strength rating. While we do not have an AKG rating, you can request a copy of our due diligence pack which gives you details of IPM’s financial strength since 2014
• Most of you would not be any more likely to recommend IPM if we had a Defaqto rating.

When we asked respondents to state, out of 10, how likely they would be to refer clients to IPM, the average score was 8.6 – so advisers/planners are clearly very happy to pass SIPP clients to us.

Improvements to online functionality would be appreciated

We also asked all respondents to let us know if various items of online functionality – such as secure messaging and online illustrations – would be useful.

Most respondents deemed online functionality either important or an important consideration when selecting a SIPP provider. Many also highlighted how useful some of this functionality would be from IPM.

Hopefully, advisers and clients have noticed that we have added additional features throughout the year in this respect. Notwithstanding these, we appreciate that this is an area we can improve. It is something we are committed to developing and are currently actively doing so.

For example, most respondents said they would find it very useful for IPM to offer a secure messaging system for clients, so that IPM can send documents to clients electronically and securely while also allowing clients to give IPM instructions.

This is something we are in the process of working on and hope to have available in early 2023.

Some final feedback from the 2022 survey

• “[We like] the quality of the people, the knowledge in the business, and [the] can-do attitude”
• “You’re doing a great job”
• “Good service levels and continuity of staff”
• “Good service, can speak to individuals”
• “The service that you receive is exceptional”
• “Very professional”
• “Good relationship with key members of the company”
• “Everyone tries to help and usually can when you call the office. Good team of people behind us as the adviser”.

We’ll leave the last word to one of our respondents who said:

“Your competitors have a lot to live up to, to meet your standards!”

Get in touch

If you want to have a chat about the potential of SIPPs for your clients, or any other aspects of pension planning, please contact us. Email info@ipm-pensions.co.uk or call 01438 747151.